Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

The Commissioner: If you feel that any useful purpose will be served.

The name of David Fenwick was called. David got up and moved quickly to the front, his expression controlled and serious. For these last six days he had been in and out of the witness-box, questioned and cross-questioned, threatened, flattered, ridiculed and cajoled, but all the time holding grimly to his point. He took the Book and was sworn.

Harry Nugent: Once again, Mr. Fenwick, about your father, Robert Fenwick, who lost his life in the disaster….

David: Yes.

Harry Nugent: Do you reaffirm that while working in Scupper Flats he expressed alarm about the possibility of an inrush?

David: Yes, he spoke of it several times.

Harry Nugent: To you?

David: Yes, to me.

Harry Nugent: Now, please, Mr. Fenwick, did you attach any importance to what your father said?

David: Yes, I did, I was worried. In fact, as I’ve told you, I went so far as to speak to Mr. Barras himself.

Harry Nugent: You actually took this matter to Mr. Barras himself?

David: Yes.

Harry Nugent: And what was his attitude?

David: He refused to listen to me.

Lynton Roscoe (rising): Sir, I protest. Mr. Nugent, not only in connection with this witness but with other witnesses, has laboured this matter beyond all bounds. I find it quite impossible to leave it where it is.

The Commissioner: Mr. Roscoe, you will have full opportunity to cross-examine this witness again if you so desire. (Turning to Nugent) But I suggest, Mr. Nugent, that we have nothing more to learn from this witness.

Harry Nugent: I have no more to say, Mr. Chairman. I have merely drawn your attention again to the possibility that the disaster might have been avoided.

Nugent sat down. But Lynton Roscoe sprang to his feet again and with a pompous gesture stopped David as he made to leave the box.

Lynton Roscoe: One moment, sir. Where did this alleged conversation take place?

David: On the Wansbeck stream. We were fishing.

Lynton Roscoe (incredulously): Do you really ask us to believe that your father, although in mortal fear of death, went calmly to amuse himself by fishing? (Sardonic pause.) Mr. Fenwick, let us be frank. Was your father an educated man?

David: He was an intelligent man.

Lynton Roscoe: Come, come, sir, confine yourself to my questions. Was he educated, I ask you?

David: Not in the restricted sense of the word.

Lynton Roscoe: I take it, sir, despite your unwillingness to admit the fact, that he was not educated. He had, for instance, no knowledge of the science of mining engineering? Answer me, yes, or no.

David: No.

Lynton Roscoe: Have you such knowledge?

David: No.

Lynton Roscoe (sarcastically): You follow the teaching profession, I understand?

David (hotly): What has my teaching got to do with the Neptune disaster?

Lynton Roscoe: That is exactly the question I propose to ask you, sir. You are a junior teacher in a County Council School without even, I believe, the qualification of the B.A. degree. You have admitted your complete ignorance of the science of mining engineering. And yet—

David: I—

Lynton Roscoe: One moment, sir. (Thumping the table.) Had you or had you not any authority from the men to act in this matter?

David: No.

Lynton Roscoe: Then how did you expect Mr. Barras to do other than ignore your presumptuous interference?

David: Was it presumptuous to try to save the lives of these hundred men?

Lynton Roscoe: Don’t be insolent, sir.

David: Insolence doesn’t belong exclusively to you.

The Commissioner (interposing): I think, Mr. Lynton Roscoe, as I remarked before, we have already exhausted the usefulness of this witness.

Lynton Roscoe (throwing out his hand): But, sir—

The Commissioner: I think it may close this matter if I state, without prejudice, that I impute no motives to Mr. Richard Barras other than the very highest.

Lynton Roscoe (smiling and bowing): I respectfully thank you, sir.

The Commissioner: Do you wish to address me further, Mr. Lynton Roscoe?

Mr. Lynton Roscoe: If you please, sir, merely to affirm the facts shortly. We may congratulate ourselves that the issue arising out of the disaster is so clear. The absence of any plan, drawing or sketch which demonstrated the Old Neptune workings is beyond doubt. These old workings, as I have shown, were abandoned in 1808 at a time long before there was any legislative provision requiring the filing of plans or the lodging of information regarding the abandonment of a pit, and when, as you may imagine, the keeping of records, indeed the conduct of mining in general, was primitive in the extreme. We are, by your leave, sir, not responsible for that! The evidence is that Mr. Richard Barras was a trusted employer and that he controlled the operations in Scupper Flats in the best and highest tradition of the industry. He did not know of the impending peril.

I cannot believe that Mr. Nugent, in the course of his cross-examination of the witness Fenwick, really implied that certain of the men who had lost their lives in the disaster had previously expressed their apprehension at water flowing into Scupper Flats.

I ask you, sir, having considered Fenwick’s evidence, on the matter of his father’s communications to him, to say that there is not one fragment of foundation for such a monstrous suggestion. At best it is a casual conversation; we have the sworn evidence of every responsible official of the colliery that not one of the workmen or local inhabitants expressed any fears or misgivings to them.

The witness Fenwick has insisted, with an acrimony which we deplore, upon his interview with Mr. Richard Barras on the night of the 13th April previous. But, sir, what importance could the manager of any colliery attach to such an irrelevant and impertinent approach as that made by Fenwick on the night in question? Had some responsible and competent person, say Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Hudspeth or some other official raised this query the case would have been altogether different. But an outsider, speaking in such uninformed and ambiguous terms of danger and water and wetness in the pit? The Neptune, sir, was essentially a wet pit and the amount of water flowing therein conveyed no possible indication of the approaching inrush.

In a word, sir, we have fully established that the management had no knowledge of the fact that they were in immediate proximity to old waterlogged workings. There was no plan, owing to a defect in the legislation previous to 1872. That, sir, is the crux of the situation. And there, with your permission, I leave it with you.

The Commissioner: Thank you, Mr. Roscoe, for your admirable and lucid summary of the case. I am not sure, Mr. Nugent, whether you wished to address me.

Harry Nugent rose slowly to his feet.

Harry Nugent: Mr. Chairman, I have little more to say at present. Later, I intend to raise the whole question of the legislation affecting wet mines in the House of Commons. This is not the first inrush of water that has taken place. We have had similar cases, lack of opportunity to see necessary plans and a large loss of life. I must repeat how serious this question is. If we are going to get safety in mines it is high time something was done about it. We are all familiar with cases where colliery owners are careless, I might even say worse than careless, underground when they get near a boundary, particularly if it presents prospects of desirable coal. It is an irregularity inseparable from the system of private ownership. Even in our good years in the mines of this country we averaged killing four men every day, 365 days of the year. Think of it, sir, a man killed every six hours, a man injured every three minutes. We have been accused of acrimony in this case. I want you to understand that I concern myself less with this local issue than with the general issue of safety in mines. We are forced to use these accidents to agitate for better conditions and more favourable legislation, for it is only when these accidents happen that we get a little sympathy. The so-called progress in the coal industry, instead of resulting in the diminution of the death and accident rates, has resulted in their increase. And we honestly believe that so long as the economic system of private ownership exists this waste of human life will continue. That, sir, is all I have to say at present.